In Zimbabwe, even loyalists are disloyal

Robyn Dixon, Times Staff Writer

Everything you'd expect to find in the office of a senior official in Zimbabwe's ruling party was there: the dominating portrait of President Robert Mugabe, the yellowing photos of liberation martyrs and heroes. The only discordant note was in the words of the official himself.

"People loved Mugabe. We loved Mugabe."

Past tense.

"We need to look for someone else," the official continued, adding that many in the ruling ZANU-PF party agree with him that it's time for the Old Man to go.

Just months ago, a conversation like this, particularly with a foreign journalist, would have been unthinkable. But Mugabe, 83, is losing powerful factions in his own party and the increasingly disaffected army, police and security forces.

The only leader Zimbabwe has known since 1980, after the end of white minority rule, he has ruled with fear and patronage. Those who fell out of favor were fired, beaten or killed, and secret police kept careful watch on perceived enemies. For much of that time, however, Zimbabwe also was among the most prosperous countries in Africa.

Mugabe started seizing land from white commercial farmers in 2000, and much of it ended up in the hands of political cronies. The move paralyzed Zimbabwe's most successful economic sector and biggest employer.

Now his country has an official inflation rate of 1,730%, the world's highest, and life expectancy is 36 years, according to World Health Organization estimates. Unemployment is about 80%. Grass grows high along potholed highways; few people can afford a bus fare, let alone gas. They gather in large groups, waiting for a lift. When a truck stops, they swarm it.

The political opposition is once more trying to mount a challenge. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, and other opposition leaders were arrested Wednesday, a little more than two weeks after Tsvangirai was arrested and beaten.

Support fades

Even as Mugabe cracks down on the opposition, his support among core backers has evaporated as hyperinflation eats into the business interests of ruling party heavyweights and gobbles police and army wages, causing mass desertions.

"The internal problems we have got are much larger than the problems created by the MDC," said the party official. "I don't think that even the president worries about the MDC. He's much more worried about what is happening in his own party."

The official's willingness to talk, even anonymously for fear of political reprisal, is a sign of the divisions in ZANU-PF and the difficulties Mugabe faces in overcoming party opposition to his plans to run for president again next year. Internal party opposition has already forced him to abandon a bid to extend his term to 2010.

African leaders, normally mute about Zimbabwe's human rights abuses and economic collapse, also have grown more alarmed since Tsvangirai and dozens of other activists were arrested and beaten in the capital, Harare, on March 11. About 100 activists have been hospitalized since then. Many were abducted from their homes and severely beaten, often with iron bars.

On Wednesday, at least nine other opposition leaders were arrested overnight, said opposition spokesman Eliphas Mukonoweshuro. Tsvangirai was released unharmed several hours later.

The opposition is demanding a new constitution leading to free and fair elections next year and is reportedly willing to offer Mugabe immunity from prosecution. Without reform, it has threatened to boycott next year's election.

Leaders of the Southern African Development Community, a regional group, will hold an emergency meeting in Tanzania today at which they are expected to press Mugabe to spell out plans to retire and ensure an orderly transition.

The small ruling party clique that still supports Mugabe argues that ZANU-PF will collapse in chaos if he goes.

'He's just greedy'

The high-ranking party official said there also was another way of viewing the situation.

"The other school of thought could be: 'No, he's just greedy. He wants to die in power. Or possibly he's married to a young girl who's very ambitious and needs that protection up to the last breath of the husband.' " Mugabe's second wife, Grace, is 42 years his junior.

Jonathan Moyo, a former information minister sacked for disloyalty in 2004, said Mugabe was facing open rebellion from two important party factions representing Emmerson Mnangagwa, a former parliament speaker, and Vice President Joyce Mujuru, who is married to the powerful former army chief Solomon Mujuru.

South Africa, the regional power, has been talking to the opposition and ruling party figures including Joyce Mujuru in an effort to ease tensions that it sees as a growing threat to all of southern Africa.

But Moyo predicted in a telephone interview that Mugabe would stage a desperate last stand to hold on to power until his death.

"The likelihood of him wanting to fight to the bitter end is very high. But there's growing fear within ZANU-PF that if he stands for election, the ruling party will lose big time. We joke that even a baboon could beat him now," Moyo said. "But he's very stubborn. He somehow believes that he's still very popular."

Many citizens remain too afraid to speak out. Simuwe Mwenzi, a 64-year-old widow who lives in a poor neighborhood of Bulawayo, said she was losing the battle to stay ahead of inflation and feed three grandchildren. Yet she won't say whom she blames for her hardships. She trusts no one, including the woman she has taken in as a boarder.

"She's a spy," Mwenzi hissed. "They could come and arrest me.

"There is a lot inside me, but I can't say anything because I'm afraid."

'Morale is down'

But fear is starting to lose its hold over security forces.

There is anger in the police and army over low salaries and the fast-track promotions of ZANU-PF loyalists and veterans of the guerrilla war to end white rule, according to seven current and former members of Zimbabwe's police and army interviewed by The Times in Harare, Bulawayo and Johannesburg, South Africa.

"Morale is down. Everyone's frustrated over the conditions," said a Bulawayo detective sergeant whose salary of 200,000 Zimbabwe dollars was worth about $10 a month at last week's black market rate and was sliding to about $6 by the middle of this week. His entire salary equals the cost of bus fare to work.

"There are a lot of people who support the opposition. Everyone just wants something to happen. They just want things to change.

"I think the major thing people are angry about is the president himself. They say he is past his prime and he should leave."

A 31-year-old sergeant who resigned from the force in Bulawayo late last month said the number of cases in which police were defying commanders had increased.

Neither man was willing to be identified for fear of reprisal.

Police have no cars or uniforms and even have to buy their own pens and photocopy forms at their own expense.

"I'm making no money," said the detective sergeant. But with most of the population unemployed, "a lot of us have no other options."

"The fear is still there [in the police force] but now people are gaining courage, especially the young guys. They're speaking out. They don't care," said the sergeant.

"People were afraid for their lives. Second, they were afraid of losing their jobs. But now the job is nothing so there's nothing to safeguard."

Coup seen as unlikely

Small-scale mutinies have been reported, but despite Mugabe's precarious support in the army and police, many say a military coup or widespread revolt is unlikely.

Moyo said factional splits over the succession in ZANU-PF were duplicated in the security forces, opening the possibility of a palace coup by those in the party determined to stop Mugabe from running next year.

Mugabe, a master of divide-and-rule tactics, recently set up a reserve force of guerrilla war veterans. He has rewarded them over the years with privileges, including generous payouts and land. They have been his most reliable supporters, known for violently dispossessing the white commercial farmers.

Without a clear successor, ZANU-PF could shatter after Mugabe's departure, Moyo said. Its biggest problem is the short lead time to force Mugabe to quit and to agree on a successor.

"Everything has been left till late. It's very unlikely ZANU-PF will survive his departure. If he is to retire, there are indications that there will be blood on the floor and ZANU-PF will split."

The high-ranking party official said the economy collapsed because Mugabe failed to curb corruption. But there was no clear candidate to replace him, he said.

"I look at everyone and I see damn fools, including the opposition. Our future is blank, and that's a very sad situation."

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robyn.dixon@latimes.com

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Back story

Under President Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk faster than any in peacetime since World War II. The inflation rate is 1,730%, and life expectancy is the world's lowest: 37 years for men, 34 for women.

Formerly the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, the country was facing international sanctions and a guerrilla uprising when white minority leader Ian Smith declared unilateral independence in 1965. Mugabe, now 83, first gained prominence in the guerrilla movement against white rule. After free elections in 1979, he took power the following year and has ruled since.

Mugabe's policy, starting in 2000, of confiscating white-owned farms triggered the collapse of commercial farming, the country's biggest employer and exporter, leading to sharp economic decline, spiraling unemployment, hard-currency shortages and hyperinflation. Once seen as the breadbasket of southern Africa, Zimbabwe now relies on international food aid to feed its 12 million residents.

In 1999, Mugabe faced powerful political dissent for the first time with the emergence of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, led by union leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Tsvangirai has twice been arrested and charged with treason. He was acquitted the first time, and the charges were ruled unconstitutional the second.